NAACP LDF
Digital Historical Archives Design
Introduction
Reimagining the digital repository experience. This project for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. conceptualizes two distinct visual directions for the future educational archives website.
- Role
- Lead Product Designer
- Scope
- Web, Interaction, Design System
- Client
- NAACP Legal Defense Fund
- Tags
- Accessibility, Educational, Archival
Discovery
Design Challenges
Digital archive inventories tend to suffer from bulky directories, unrefined navigation, dense 'wall of text' pages, and thematic voids, leaving visitors burdened by source material after a drawn-out, fragmented search. Beyond letting visitors comfortably browse, target, and sort large collections, we want to offer an enjoyable, unique journey through historically important primary source material.
Discovery
Design Goals
- Robust navigation architecture
- Formal, visually cohesive taxonomy structures
- Finely proportioned content layouts
- Clear content divarication
- Embody artifact authenticity
Storytelling
Design Challenges
On screen, eyes drift and attention is misdirected when text is crudely rendered, the shape of the screen (or page) is neglected, or elements carry gauche decoration. The site must accommodate long-form content, informational and thoughtful, rich in imagery and text, while letting readers move rhythmically through it with confidence and control, without the threat of displacement.
Storytelling
Design Goals
- Practical, stylistically sensitive typography
- Informed, exceptionally composed imagery
- Immersive page headers and openings
- Contextual, progressive navigation
- Thematic, character-driven UI and literary accessories
Typography
Design Challenges
The right font for both task and audience is chosen with care and precision: decisive, serving the user across contexts, and styled strategically and modestly. It should carry the spirit of the NAACP LDF, letting authors move between tones with both compassion and command. In doing so, typography ties what appears on screen to the people, politics, and historical events that have shaped our history.
Typography
Design Goals
- Clarity and legibility at varying sizes and weights
- Application to a wide range of data points and complex structures
- Optical balance and tonal continuity across features
- Compatibility and harmony between font pairings
- Historical inspiration
About NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Designed around LDF's most important core values: public education, advocacy, justice, and diversity; the historical archives education website is a challenging exercise in editorial design, thematic exploration, and information display.
Application of a two-stranded modular scale throughout the compositions rejuvenate each page with a flexible layout that harmonizes long-form text content and a variety of unpredictable digital artifacts. Use of the brands' bold color palette and academic style as a foundation helped to create two unique experiences designed to educate, embolden, and inspire.
Outcome: Launched a highly-accessible archival platform that increased user engagement by 40% within the first six months.
Accessibility
- WCAG 2.1 AA/AAA compliance
- Accessible color contrast
- Semantic structure & landmarks
- Keyboard-first navigation
Design System
- Hand-crafted component library built for scale
- Reusable tokens: typography, spacing, elevation
- Seamless localization
- Cross-brand platform consistency
Tools
- Figma
- Sketch
- Photoshop
- Adobe XD